1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information browser and particularly relates to an information browser configured to pre-read meta information and a method of pre-reading information.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, many digital-versatile-disk (DVD) recorders including a hard-disk drive and many devices configured to accumulate digital-video contents so that a user can browse the digital-video contents that are available. The main function of the DVD recorder is to digitally record a television broadcast so that the user can view the television broadcast. Additionally, private contents obtained through a digital-still camera, a digital-video camera, and so forth can be accumulated on the DVD recorder so that the user can browse the private contents.
Further, systems configured to uniquely manage contents accumulated on a plurality of digital-video-content servers including a digital-living-network alliance (DLNA), a media server, and so forth so that a user can browse the accumulated contents have become rapidly available. Each of the above-described systems is configured to transfer digital-video contents accumulated by using a local-area-network (LAN) environment constructed in a household and decode the digital-video contents in real time so that the user can view the digital-video contents (for example, refer to “Digital Living Network Alliance”, [online], [retrieved on Jul. 12, 2006], the Internet <http://www.dlna.org/about/DLNA_Overview.pdf>). When another content server is added to the system, the user can easily handle an increased number of accumulated contents. Further, the user can search for and/or view all of the contents without minding the server storing the contents.
Usually, for generating a screen image used for retrieving contents, each of the above-described systems collects meta-data items relating to all of the accumulated contents from all of the content servers, and generates the content-retrieval-screen image after the meta-data items are obtained.
According to the above-described method, however, considerable time is consumed to generate an initial screen image, due to an increased number of contents. Moreover, the memory resource in a display apparatus may become insufficient. For avoiding the above-described problems, a method of collecting only meta data relating to contents necessary for display may be considered. According to the above-described method, however, the meta data necessary for display is collected each time the display state changes. In that case, latency time occurs before the next screen image is displayed, which makes it difficult for the user to perform a retrieval operation comfortably.
On the other hand, in the case where an Internet browser is used, home-page data generated by using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or the like is downloaded to a browser terminal, and the home-page data is displayed. In the past, in the case where the Internet browser is used, a user specifies a link destination by using a mouse or the like and starts downloading home-page data obtained at the link destination. Therefore, even though an interactive operation is performed, the user has to wait until the downloading is finished. For avoiding the above-described problem, there have been proposed various technologies for pre-reading the home-page data obtained at the link destination and an application program necessary to display the home-page data before the link destination is specified.
Further, there has been proposed a technology for determining whether or not information about the link destination, the information being subjected to pre-reading, had already been downloaded, and pre-reading only information that had not been downloaded so that the pre-reading efficiency is increased. The above-described technology is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-305836, for example.
Further, there has been proposed a technology for managing the access log of a user, analyzing the access log, and downloading information about a link destination according to the inclination and access pattern of the user so that downloading of unnecessary information is reduced and the pre-reading efficiency is increased. The above-described technology is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-280405, for example.
There has been proposed a technology for monitoring the position of a mouse cursor, predicting an operation performed by a user, and assigning priority to information for pre-reading so that the pre-reading efficiency is increased. The above-described technology is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-251315 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-085174, for example.
However, the above-described technologies allow for pre-reading information about static link destinations arranged on the Internet in a two-dimensional manner. Therefore, the above-described technologies only allow for pre-reading the link-destination information imbedded in displayed information generated by using HTML or the like. Further, a continuous same operation is not considered in the above-described technologies. Therefore, when information about images or the like is viewed through slideshow with high speed, pre-reading operations lag behind display operations performed to achieve the slideshow, which makes it difficult for a user to browse through the information comfortably.